Computer Techies, I Need Help Again!!!

Since I've moved back to San Francisco, I'm looking for a full time music gig again, as I'm without a band. I've been answering ads for established bands that are, for whatever reason, in need of a bassist. Many of these bands have webpages with mp3s and other song samples posted.

Here's my question. When I "click the link" for these songs, they play in Realplayer. Now, that's great to hear a sample, but I couldn't learn the song that way. I have a dial-up connection, and they usually "buffer", (I hate buffering), for a good 4-5 minutes before playing. If I'm learning their song, I can't do it that way.

Is there any way to save these songs as an mp3, or whatever? I have no interest in stealing these people's songs, burning them to disc and cruising down the street. I want to have the edge on rehearsals, and while I can wait for them to mail me their CD or whatever, I'd like to say, "Don't bother, I learned the songs from your webpage."

I do have several types of music software as well, if they help, or is this impossible?

If you use Internet Explorer, and I'm just guessing you do, go to Tools->Internet Options->under the general tab look for Temp files, click view files, look for the Mp3 and save it. That's the longest way around I could think of.

OK, first of all, Real Audio/Media is pure Satan. They make it impossibly difficult to convert from their POS format to something like .mp3... however, I digress.

/rant

OK, now that's over with.. for MP3 files, if you no longer want the Evil Real Media player to be associated with them, right click on an MP3 file you have on your computer, select "Open with...". From the list of options, select the Windows Media Player. Make sure you select the check box that says "always use the selected program to open files of this type". Viola. Half of you problem is solved. Now, when you are going to listen to an MP3 file that is on a website, always try right clicking the file and choosing "save as" to save it locally to you machine. As some people have pointed out, it's impossible to do this, because the link is actually a pointer to the actual audio file (which is designed to prevent people from saving it locally). However, there is the miracle of the Internet Explorer cache, which someone pointed out above.

Make sense? Help?

-Brian

Uber Geek-Boy by day, Musician by night. Sleep? That's for people with nothing better to do...

The problem is that your operating system has associated .mp3 files with the Real player. Here's a little trick you can do if you're running Win95/98/possibly ME to correct the problem:

Go to the START button in windows, click on RUN, and type in 'winfile' (no quotes). This will bring up the old file manager from Win 3.1. Using the old file manager, navigate to an .mp3 file on your hard drive and single-click it to highlight it. Now, go up to the menubar on the file manager and click on FILE. From that dropdown list, there's an option called ASSOCIATE. Click on that and then you will get a window where you can pick what program you use to open that .mp3 file (like winamp.exe). Once you're done with that, whenever an .mp3 file is called (via hyperlink or by just clicking on one in windows), it'll play in the associated player.

I don't think this windows artifact exists in XP or 2000. It's saved my bacon on more than a few occasions.

The problem is that your operating system has associated .mp3 files with the Real player. Here's a little trick you can do if you're running Win95/98/possibly ME to correct the problem:

Go to the START button in windows, click on RUN, and type in 'winfile' (no quotes). This will bring up the old file manager from Win 3.1. Using the old file manager, navigate to an .mp3 file on your hard drive and single-click it to highlight it. Now, go up to the menubar on the file manager and click on FILE. From that dropdown list, there's an option called ASSOCIATE. Click on that and then you will get a window where you can pick what program you use to open that .mp3 file (like winamp.exe). Once you're done with that, whenever an .mp3 file is called (via hyperlink or by just clicking on one in windows), it'll play in the associated player.

I don't think this windows artifact exists in XP or 2000. It's saved my bacon on more than a few occasions.

-72

Click to expand...

You can associate file types by opening a folder and choosing "Tools" in newer Windows versions. From there select "Folder options" then "File types". Pick the file extension then the program you'd like to open it with.